With step-by-step techniques, how to diagrams, professional hints and tips and makeover projects, this is an indispensable guide to home improvement with creative ideas to decorate and personalise the home to achieve beautiful results with the minimum amount of time, effort and expense. Every home needs repairing, updating or repair work to keep it looking fresh, stylish and in good condition and whether you have a new home in need of additional features and fittings or an older property requiring a major overhaul or simply want to refresh an outmoded decorating scheme, this is a big chunky glossy reference book providing all the guidance, expertise and inspiration and information required. There is advice on colour, texture and pattern, recognising available space effectively, choosing lighting to enhance every room, and chapters on painting, wallpaper hanging, tiling, laying floor coverings, features and fittings, soft furnishings, maintenance and repairs. More than 250 instant decorating ideas and 2,000 photographs and illustrations in colour help you look after lined curtains and drapes, roman blinds, lay vinyl, lino or cork floor tiles, paint and varnish floors, add a cornice, panel a room, fit fixed shelving, doors or drawers, fit an extractor fan or extra air bricks for controllable ventilation, and in furnishings create a stool out of wood, an Astroturf chair, a space age chair, a Polynesian throne, a bent-wire chandelier, an Inca bird print, a star cupboard, a Moses backet. With advice on preparing and planning your work, choosing appropriate materials, paints and equipment for the job in hand. A quality large softback, 512 glossy pages packed with hundreds of colour photos.

Bonsai is the Japanese art of caring for trees and these miniature trees represent the next level of plant parenthood. When given the right care they can be rewarding to grow and here is a marvellous directory of over 50 popular varieties with beautiful photography capturing the unique character of every plant. Organised by outdoor and indoor, there is a Japanese white pine, Abbott's pygmy Canadian hemlock, a dwarf birch, or Alberta spruce, Little John Hinoki Cyprus, a bearberry cotoneaster with small white blooms in spring followed by berries in late summer that turn dark red in winter and colourful leaves in the autumn, it can be trained for cascading styles. Even the European olive, the willow leaf fig and the Bougainvillea with its pink tissue-papery bracts in hues of pink and scarlet we are familiar with on the sunny walls of Mediterranean homes can be bonsaied, and pruned heavily. Place in full sun, regulate soil moisture, keep between 7°C and 38°C in a well ventilated area and use a soil mix of 70% organic matter sifting out any fine particles and 30% grit and watch for aphids or white fly. With expert advice on general care, tips on pruning and styling. 144pp in a beautifully designed publication complete with glossary and list of suppliers and laid out almost like a recipe book. 100 colour illus.

Papermaking was invented in China probably around 2000 years ago and spread with the rapid expansion of Islamic culture into Spain and throughout Europe where the techniques for the production of decorated papers emerged. Often made to resemble expensive material such as marble, gold or exclusive fabric, they were sold at markets and paper shops and used as endpapers and wrappers for books, musical scores and brochures and for linings for boxes and decorating interiors of cabinets. They still appear in books today and are found in specialty paper stores. The combination of a viscous underlayer and floating dyes is essential to the flowing, organic designs typical of marbled paper. Dyes can be splashed or dipped to resemble naturally occurring structures or can be arranged into orderly patterns using a brush or comb or stick and introducing veins, curves, fans or waves. Once the desired effect is achieved, a sheet of paper is floated on the dye, transferring a mirror image of the design to the paper. This book contains examples of the best-known styles of marbling including comb pages 24-41, French curl pages 56-57, and stone marbling pages 80-119 including pebble patterns and veined marbling. Designs on pages 120-144 illustrate a shadow effect achieved by making ripples in the marbled liquid. The full page colour images throughout the book can be used as wrapping paper for small items (if you dare!), as a graphic resource and for inspiration and all are stored on the enclosed CD-ROM to decorate your letters, flyers, T-shirts etc. Large square softback, 144pp, colour.

Beautiful reprint of the pioneering 1904 colour book Familiar London with Rose Barton's original paintings enlarged and placed in contemporary context with related images from period maps and postcards, newspapers and railway tickets and line art as well as a narrative on London in the early 20th century. There are images of people standing in the Strand waiting for election news about Home Rule for Ireland and Gladstone's advocacy of Irish rights with an image of a crowd of well-dressed Victorians waiting patiently outside the offices of the Daily Graphic. There is the Changing the Guard, Whitehall (little changed), Cromwell Road and the museum district, Villiers Street, Charing Cross where Rudyard Kipling resided at number 43, small self-confident children watching ducks in a London park, tiny children walking hand in hand under Hungerford Bridge, a horse and carriage on a hot afternoon in Piccadilly, sailing boats on the Serpentine, waiting for royalty, and lining the streets of Horse Guards Parade and Hyde Park, the Royal Exchange on Lombard Street, the old River Wall at Chelsea, the dark water and overhanging warehouses beautifully painted in greys and blues and the completely unchanged entrance to the Apothecaries' Garden, now known as Chelsea Physic Garden. We counted 61 exquisite images from gentleman's clubs to flower girls, Nelson's Column in a fog, to hospitals and the Bell Inn, Holborn. Eight maps are reproduced from the 1902 Philips' handy-volume Atlas of London with information on public buildings, railways, tramways and steamboats reproduced across two pages in colour and with postcards alongside and an explanation about the original book and the new world of colour printing when the late Victorians and Edwardians embraced technology and the strides in printing and ink technology. Also maps on endpapers. 26 x 29.2cm, 176pp, colour.

A British Museum and Thames & Hudson co-production with 203 illustrations, the book tells the story of the reception of the Parthenon sculptures in the modern era, as well as Rodin's continued engagements with them throughout his life. Famous for The Thinker and The Kiss, Auguste Rodin drew energy and inspiration from the art of Classical antiquities, and he absorbed and assimilated the modes of ancient Greek and Roman art in his own work in innovative ways. The Parthenon sculptures in particular were a lifelong passion and he first encountered them in books, plaster casts at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and some originals in the Louvre, and then drew them first-hand on several visits to the British Museum. He amassed a collection of antiquities, including many fragments of marble sculpture, which he regarded as complete objects in themselves and introduced the idea in his own work of the headless, limbless torso as an object of art, much influencing his contemporaries. Here is all the emotion and the motion, and essays and texts by such experts as Celeste Farge and Ian Jenkins on the French Romance for Greek marbles, and Bénédicte Garnier on The Thousand Parthenons of Auguste Rodin. Rodin rejoiced in the Parthenon sculptures as precious survivors of the art of Pheidias, the most famous sculptor of all antiquity, and in him Rodin found a spiritual companion and mentor. Rodin's modernism bridged the abyss of time, and the headless, armless The Walking Man seems to stride into the 20th century announcing a new purpose for sculpture, for art, for mankind. Exquisitely printed and bound with hundreds of full page and double page spreads, illustrations, close ups and working plasters, Rodin at work in photographs and old gelatine silver prints, with large pull quotes, this is a rare exhibition catalogue Bibliophile is lucky to offer at a discount. 240 very large pages.

Connect, control and secure your home network set up the easy way in this superb introduction to Alexa, Google, Siri and many other miraculous devices of today's smart home. Learn how to choose between them, set them up for all your gadgets to operate smoothly together, get the most out of the features they offer and what to do when things go wrong. Learn how to make your devices read the news out aloud, light the way to the bathroom the moment you wake up, play your favourite piece of music, share your lists and passwords with friends and family securely and how to stop hackers. The real home hub today can offer a plethora of wireless technology and in effect home helps whether to get the best out of your television or simply shout at Alexa to watch Star Trek Discovery. There are naming tips when setting up sensible sensitive lights, smart switches and plugs and moving on from voice activated kitchen radios and speakers, Internet technology has started looking to fridges, ovens and hobs. Add additional thermostats and create a zonal temperature control, using smart radiator valves. Robot recycling is coming soon with smart bins, kettles and coffee makers. Then there is of course monitoring and security with cameras recording and notifying you automatically. In terms of health there are not only baby monitors made to look like bunny rabbits which can also be useful as just an intercom between you and your partner in the garden shed or reading at the bottom of the garden, but also to help keep an eye on your health, body fat, or blood pressure with no more mercury temperature controls. Then there are floor cleaners, pet care, and the WeMo Smart Plug which does not even need a hub and can work directly with your phone or assistant like Alexa and can be told when to turn on the coffee pot and set to 'on' before you go to bed. 160pp in large softback with big clear diagrams and colour photos throughout its careful step-by-step design.

Sub-titled 'Magic, the Paranormal and the Complicity of the Mind', this beautifully designed Thames & Hudson publication investigates the arts of deception as practiced by mesmerists, magicians and psychics since the early 18th century. Magician turned experimental psychologist Matthew Tompkins exposes how sleight of hand and the power of suggestion have tricked the minds of even the most rational and cynical observers. Many of the 534 spectacular illustrations and posters are from the Wellcome Collection on all manner of ephemera such as automatic writing, a sorcery manual, spirit photography, a ghost hunting kit and more. Here are the psychical researchers, spiritualist phenomena, parapsychological investigators, séances, inducing a mesmeric trance, skulls which phrenologists have robbed and great seers like Andrew Jackson Davis in the late 19th century, magnetic sleep passed from practitioner to patient, methods for curing your own ailments without drugs, doctors, expense or exposure, and posters boasting fanciful captions. There are accounts of cosmic afterlife and spirit worlds, a spirit rapping hand used during séances to 'rap out' messages ostensibly from beyond the grave although actually controlled by the medium, and the spirit trumpet which during a séance once the room was dark would mysteriously begin to rise and float in the air, emitting 'spirit voices' and perhaps even ectoplasm. Crystal gazing and pendulums, the case for telepathy and energy flow, the great Houdini and his handcuffs and chains, crate escapes and magic tricks sawing a beautiful woman in half, the decapitation act with a wax likeness 'victim' as a dramatic stage trick, visual illusion to try for yourself and the princess card trick explained, the book is a cabinet of curiosities. 224 big glamorous pages, fully illus., colour.

First published in 1967, we have the British Library paperback reprint of a now classic crime thriller. Set mainly in the London of the Swinging Sixties, and written in the days when John le Carré and Len Deighton were making a name for themselves, George Sims never became as famous as his two illustrious contemporaries. However, this novel was included by H. R. F. Keating in Crime and Mystery: The 100 Best Books. The story opens on an August afternoon in Paddington. A small man is standing on a ledge outside a window, ten floors above the street. Dizzy and frightened, he plunges to the ground 'uttering a single short cry, a noise which did not sound particularly human, simply that ignominious yelp of an animal encountering death'. Suddenly there is a switch of setting and mood and we are in Corsica, at the same time on the same day, where a middle aged dealer in manuscripts and autographed letters is in bed with a girl called Bunty who is young enough to be his daughter. At the very same time 2pm Ned Balfour wakes in Corsica beside his beautiful woman his fellow art dealer and Dachau survivor Sam Weiss falls ten stories to his death. Ned refuses to believe that Sam's death was intentional, and his investigation thrusts him into the deceit and fraudulence of the art world, where he unmasks more than one respectable face. A thrilling tale of vertigo, suspicion and infidelity, this is a long-forgotten classic with an intriguing plot twist written by the antiquarian book seller and unorthodox writer who was popular for his cleverly-woven narratives. 191pp, paperback.

In 1724 'A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates' went on sale in Charles Rivington's shop near St Paul's Cathedral and was an immediate success. By 1726 it had been expanded to a two-volume edition, and in 1734 formed part of an extensive volume that now included the outrageous exploits of highwaymen, street robbers and other scoundrels. The volume includes such famous characters as Edward Teach, Blackbeard, and John Rackam, Calico Jack, who had two female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read disguised among his crew. Some of the other 25 famous outlaws are William Kidd, Bartholomew Roberts, Henry Morgan, Captain Avery, Major Stede Bonnet, Captain Charles Vane, Captain John Rackam, and John Gow. Of the most famous, the Scotsman William Kidd was hanged (twice because the first time the rope snapped) in London in May 1701, and his body then gibbeted at Tilbury Point on the Thames. Henry Avery probably died in poverty in Barnstaple in 1714, his extraordinary ill-gotten wealth having run through his fingers like sand. Blackbeard, the notorious Englishman Edward Teach, was killed in battle with the Royal Navy in November 1718. That year Royal Navy Captain Woodes Rogers defeated an entire colony of pirates in the Bahamas and accepted the surrender of 2000 men. Calico Jack and ten of his crew were hanged in Jamaica in November 1720. An enormous number of other pirates were also captured and executed, estimates ranging from 400-600 between 1716 and 1726. The curse of piracy had been lifted by legal changes and better maritime policing. Blending fact and fiction, many of the details have been verified by historical research and others have endured for centuries to influence the popular image of pirates in literature, film and television. These are tales that cross the Atlantic in both directions, to the new worlds of the west and the coasts of Africa. 396pp, lovely woodcut illus.

Myron Bolitar screwed up. He was supposed to be protecting a woman and instead he fell in love with her - and then she died. So he's dropped out and run away to the Caribbean to escape his guilt, but now everything has come back to haunt him. Esperanza Diaz, his closest friend, is in trouble. Murder trouble. The victim is one of Myron's own clients, and the case seems to be watertight. It's inconceivable that Esperanza is involved, but she is refusing to deny it, so in order to help his friend, Myron must battle for her freedom against her own wishes. 344pp, paperback.